Introduction

It has been nearly 5 years since I last picked up a piece of wood with any intention of turning it in to something useful (unless you count the 2x4 I set down on my garage floor to indicate when my wife’s car is fully inside). 5 years ago, I moved out of my parents’ house and started my first “real job” (let’s face it, working part-time at K-Mart is not a real job) and since then I have not had the space, time, and/or tools to do any serious woodworking.

During that brief post-college, pre-employment period of my life, I began manufacturing a complete set of Tetris shelves so I could have a unique storage center in my new apartment. Unfortunately, I never made it past purchasing and cutting the boards. Every apartment I have lived in has had one closet shelf devoted to storing a stack of high-quality oak and every time I see that shelf I can’t help but see an unfinished task.

Sunday night, while looking for a book I seem to have lost, I once again ‘found’ my collection of woodworking books and magazines sitting on the bottom of my bookshelf. While skimming through a few of these books, I was hit with a flash of inspiration when I discovered plans for a simple workbench. Suddenly I realized I now have the time, space, and even tools to work on a lot of simple woodworking projects again.

I also had the idea that it would probably be interesting to chronicle my future woodworking endeavors. That is where this blog comes into the picture. Over the future weeks/months/years, I hope to keep fairly detailed records of all my various projects (wood and other mediums included) and hope that they will be useful to somebody somewhere.

The ultimate goal is to one-day finish those Tetris shelves I started 5 years ago, but I have a long way to go before my workshop is capable of handling that project. Right now, I have no work bench and just a few basic tools in my apartment, but that will all change as time goes on.

My first project has already been decided and will begin this weekend: building a pair of sawhorses so I can build that workbench and have a place to work.